Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Sunday, May 18, 2014

Propaganda, Palestine and the Information War. (Part I)

The PSC (Palestine Solidarity Campaign) holds
an annual stall in Richmond, South
London and it spreads propaganda against Jews and Israelis.I joined a group of people, Jews and
Christians who have decided to take a stand against the lies disseminated by
the PSC.Richmond is the former constituency of the notorious
anti-Zionist Jenny Tonge.

From this event I took away four tactics that
are practiced by our enemies:incitement, denial, emotive concealment of intent and the diplomacy of
betrayal.

First, the truly committed antisemite does not
care what they say and therefore as offensive as their narrative may be, one
cannot argue with them, or even, as I did, use shock tactics to encourage them
to confront their own statements. Generalized assertions that are facile, provocative
and weighed down with bile are intended for vilification, not dialogue; for
propaganda not reconciliation.By
hammering home their message, making false connections and being selective
about the truth, the Palestine Propaganda Campaign has the power to persuade even
the most reasonable people that day is night and night is day.

Second, the Israeli side will always be willing
to admit past wrongs and shared failure however, the Palestinian narrative is
wholly based on denial. They deny the cultural and religious diversity of the
geographical arena by expressly minimizing or denying any Jewish relevance to
the area; they ignore many centuries of persecution throughout the Arab world
by the Arabs against the indigenous Jewish population (which clearly was the
contributory factor in Jewish demands for self-determination).

The Muslim Arab world has always been guilty of
grossly abusing its minorities.That is
proven by history.Rarely though, has
this Islamic militancy, missionary zeal and an unquenchable thirst for conquest
been investigated even as we place our own statecraft under the microscope of
world opinion. The Arab world feels no
shame but instead it accuses its victims of implementing the same policies of
which it is guilty.We may label it transference
of guilt but it is also a remorseless and cynical act of contempt for formerly
persecuted, victim populations. It is hardly surprising that this should be the
case.For over 1,300 years Islam was the
master of its own aggressive and acquisitive colonial triumphs.To this day, the Arab and greater Muslim
world remains in a state of mourning for the loss of Christian Spain 500 years
earlier and Christian Greece almost 200 years ago.After barely 70 years Jewish Israel cannot realistically
expect that being freed from its Muslim colonial aggressor will be accepted, or
forgiven, any time soon.

But while a theological pathology may explain denial,
a deliberate campaign of lies is harder to combat.And relearning a civil discourse (as I
recently read) will only happen when the other side understands that it has
something worse to lose.

Palestinian propaganda is anodyne; it is built
on dissimulation and disinformation.Their leaflets often portray the Arabs as victims of Western
aggression.Jews are portrayed as quintessentially
foreign, which dovetails exquisitely with European antisemitic memes.

What truly disgusts me, and always will, is
that the Nazis used the term “Judaisation” to describe the alleged Jewish conquest
(cultural or financial) of Christian Europe.It denoted a meme by which racial and religious fear was instilled in an
already xenophobic and antisemitic population. This was an essential element of
racial propaganda which fascism fed to a receptive population, a population that
had already been primed by centuries of religiously inspired incitement and
pious hypocrisy. It should come as no
surprise then, that the Palestinians and their supporters are such enthusiastic
proponents of the same tactics, the same language.But it does.And tactics reflect aims.It is
for this reason I am filled with despair for the Palestinian bigots and their
British fascist supporters because tactics clearly demonstrate that they are not
interested in either reconciliation, or peace.

The late twentieth century was unique in the colossal
sense of guilt and shame felt in the Western world for the commission of
slavery, for racial prejudice and its inevitably nefarious outcomes, for Western
imperialism and for genocide.No other
civilization has had to deal with such huge levels of guilt.While we lash ourselves in self-righteous
dishonor we remain blissfully ignorant of the inhumanity that non-Western
nations were (and are) capable of committing. This has been painfully demonstrated by Muslim
slavers dressed in the theocratic insularity of Jihad. Once more they are reasserting
their influence over the Nigerian faithful.The Islamic world has the Koran and its commentaries to justify every
activity for which we in the West now feel nothing but shame and guilt.And they have 1,300 years of Islamic precedent
to support their cause.We already have
conspiracy theorists blaming a shadowy non-Muslim ‘Other’ for the crimes of the
faith community in Nigeria.

In the USA the apologists for the gun
lobby state that guns do not kill people, people kill people. In the Muslim
world the mantra for every unpalatable crime for which we in the West take exception
is that “the true Muslim” is blameless.And in our inverted moral universe we accept their excuses for every
unimaginable crime against humanity committed by them.Instead
we should be demanding parity, the same high minded ethical conduct, regardless
of race, creed or color.

So when the Muslim world and its Western
acolytes lecture me on the Judaisation of Jerusalem or any other part of Israel
I want to scream in rage at the injustice that despoils our historical memory,
at the cynical abuse of language and at the willingness with which sympathizers
on a Liberal-Left fascist continuum so readily collaborate in this Muslim-Arab war
against “the Jews” (even when they call us Zionists).

-------------------------

I began this piece by referring to four tactics
practiced by our enemies:incitement,
denial, emotive concealment of intent and the diplomacy of betrayal.The fourth and final cog in the machinery of
disenfranchisement and delegitimization, diplomacy, I will analyse in the next
piece.